EE is a UK wireless carrier and broadband provider that is owned by both Orange and Deutsche Telekom.

Recently, EE came up with a new idea to make a few extra dollars. If subscribers of EE call customer service and want to go to the front of the queue, they could pay money!

Specifically, those looking to quickly speak to a representative can pay a flat fee of $0.83 during business hours. If you don’t pay this fee, EE is now stating that you should expect to wait even longer.

“Adding fuel to the fire are comments by an EE spokesperson that suggest the priority service means calls from customers that don’t pay the charge will take longer to be answered, PC Pro reported citing an article in the Mirror newspaper.” – FierceWireless

Therefore, customers are outraged at this move and are making it known to EE who face a customer backlash.

Long-standing customers reacted badly to the move, which is being offered to all EE subscribers except its pay-as-you-go users. Subscribers vented their fury on Twitter, with several branding the move “disgusting” and stating they would switch to a rival operator when their EE contract expires, according to reports by the BBC and the Independent. – FierceWireless

Based on previous research by Ofcom, the communications regulator in the UK, EE receives the most complaints for broadband services.

UK’s EE giant mobile operator is apparently already taking pre-orders for the Galaxy Note 3 in its retail stores, although the handset is not listed on its websites.

According to Android Central, EE stores (including Orange and T-Mobile locations in the region) started taking pre-orders for Samsung’s new flagship today, although launch details aren’t available at this time – presumably the handset will be available by the end of September, considering that Switzerland will get it this month as well.

The publication says the price for the handset will differ depending on where you purchase it from:

EE retail stores: £149.99 with new two-year contracts of £41 per month

Orange stores: £119.99 with new two-year contracts of £42 per month

T-Mobile stores: £139.99 with new two-year contracts of £42 per month

Furthermore, EE will offer its Galaxy Note 3 buyers a few additional services, as follows:

EE Film – the only service in the UK which combines 2 for 1 cinema ticketing, listings, trailers and film downloads or streaming in one place

A discount of £5 per month on EE superfast Fiber Broadband – so they can get blistering speeds at home and on the move

Fast track customer service by dialing ‘33’ from their handset

Clone Phone Lite – giving people 500MB free storage to back up the content that matters most

Choose an add-on – customers who take a 4GEE phone plan from £41 per month can also choose from a Deezer music, Games or TV add-on to enjoy

We would expect EE to start taking Galaxy Note 3 online pre-orders in the near future as well, considering that it’s already listing the Xperia Z1 on its websites (Orange and T-Mobile included).

]]>http://www.androidauthority.com/galaxy-note-3-pre-orders-uk-ee-orange-t-mobile-264122/feed/3Galaxy S4 Mini available for pre-order in the UK, ships on July 5http://www.androidauthority.com/galaxy-s4-mini-pre-order-uk-227524/
http://www.androidauthority.com/galaxy-s4-mini-pre-order-uk-227524/#commentsFri, 14 Jun 2013 19:53:28 +0000http://www.androidauthority.com/?p=227524

The Galaxy S4 Mini is now available for pre-order in the UK, with shipping set to start on July 5.

This particular Galaxy S4 family member is expected to offer users a mobile experience similar to its bigger and more famous brother, or at least that’s what Samsung officials will have you think.

However, the fact is that the handset is just a mid-ranger device even if it looks very much like the real deal, so we aren’t really surprised to see it offered free of charge in the region, at least while on pre-order. As long as you pick a two-year monthly contract of at least £27 until July 5, you’ll walk away with a free device, UnwiredView reports.

After that, the handset will cost £49.99 with the same £27/month agreement. That particular contract will get you unlimited minutes, unlimited texting, and 250MB of data with Orange, or 500 minutes, unlimited texting and unlimited data with T-Mobile.

We’ll note that Orange and T-Mobile also have a slightly cheaper offer for the handset, at £26 per month for the handset, which will include fewer voice minutes and/or data, depending on which carrier you select.

You’ll find the Galaxy S4 Mini in Orange and T-Mobile stores (or Everything Everywhere stores if you like), but it’s likely that the handset will also be available from other local mobile operators in the future.

The Galaxy S4 Mini is available in two colors, from either carrier, the “regular” Black Mist and White Frost options.

If you’re in the market for a high quality mid-range handset then Sony’s Xperia SP could be just what you’re looking for. Even better still you won’t have to wait to get your hands on one as the smartphone officially went on sale in the UK yesterday.

The Xperia SP is the Xperia Z’s little brother, but it’s no slouch when it comes to hardware specs. For a quick recap, the handset comes with a powerful 1.7GHz dual-core Snapdragon S4 Plus processor, Adreno 320 GPU which offers plenty of 3D processing power, and 1GB RAM. As you’d expect, the handset is slightly smaller than the Xperia Z; it comes with a 4.6-inch TFT LCD display which packs in 1280×720 pixels.

The Xperia SP also has rear and front facing cameras, with 8 megapixels and 0.3 megapixels respectively, 8Gb of internal storage which can be expanded with an additional 32Gb via microSD card, and it has with a 2370mAh battery as well. Oh and Android Jelly Bean is 4.2.2 thrown in as standard too.

Sounds good right, but let’s talk prices. T-Mobile currently has the best Pay as You Go price at £249.99, and is also offering the handset for free when you sign up to a £21.00 a month contract for two years. Orange is also offering the phone at the same price, but requires a £10 top up as well. Orange also currently has the cheapest two year contract, saving you an almighty 50p a month, starting at just £20.50 for 300 minutes and unlimited texts or 100 minutes, unlimited texts and 500MB of data.

We’re still waiting on other major UK carriers 02 and Three to release their price plans. Alternatively, if you’re looking for a SIM-free version then Clove and Handtec have you covered at competitive prices. Finally Amazon is still waiting for stock, it should have the handset on sale by 6th May.

As for GS4 prices, we heard something from America, Italy and Germany and now it’s time to add a little extra for cravers of “the next big thing” in the UK.

Though pre-orders were said to only begin on March 28, two online British retailers have jumped the gun, allowing impatient folks to reserve a place in front of the line. Unlocked-Mobiles only has the SIM-free S4 up for grabs, while MobilePhonesDirect offers both the outright and on-contract versions.

The former is the way to go if you don’t like carrier restrictions, with both the white frost and black mist 16 GB S4s going for £529.98 including VAT. That’s $802, which definitely sounds like a premium, but it’s more or less what UK retailers charge for the HTC One and Sony Xperia Z as well.

Meanwhile, MobilePhonesDirect has the SIM-free GS4 listed at a steeper £564.99, but also free with 24-month O2, Vodafone, Orange or T-Mobile agreements. Monthly plans start at £32 with O2, £37 with Vodafone, £39.50 with Orange and £40.50 with T-Mobile, so again Samsung seems to be on-par with the competition (HTC One and Xperia Z).

Oddly, MobilePhonesDirect estimates shipping to start in “43 working days”, which, if we’re not mistaken, would set the launch date for May 20. Unlocked-Mobiles, on the other hand, expects the phone to be in stock on April 26 – the official release date in most European countries.

Both retailers should sell the “international” Exynos 5 Octa variant of the Samsung Galaxy S4 with 4G LTE support on-board. Anyone ready to pre-order or are you goint to wait a little more to thoroughly analyze the market?

Tizen is another Linux based operating system, like Android, which is being developed in a joint venture between Samsung and Intel. The initial idea was to create an open source operating system free from Google, where carriers would have more control over the content.

The new operating system has been demoed at MWC this week, but as well as showing off the interface and apps there have been some important announcements regarding the future of this fledgling operating system.

Huawei has now joining the Tizen Association, which steers development of the operating system, and European network provider Orange has signed up as another carrier looking to take future Tizen powered handsets to market.

Japanese network provider NTT Docomo has confirmed that it wants to be the first carrier to offer a Tizen smartphone, and we’ve already heard that Samsung is planning on shipping out Tizen handset later this year. Similarly Orange has committed to bringing Samsung and Huawei smartphones powered by the new OS to market in 2013. This certainly puts the pressure on Google, as Samsung is the go to manufacturer for many consumers looking for a non iOS smartphone.

Orange and NTT Docomo have both stated the first Tizen phones will debut for around $300, which puts them towards the top end of the market. Orange also has plans to bring Tizen to emerging markets sometime in 2014, which could see budget models also using the new operating system.

What do you think of Tizen? Is this a sign of growing tensions between Samsung and Google, a sensible business decision to diversify away from Android, or a win for us consumers via a broadening of choice?

Yet there’s something about the One that sticks. And for the time being at least, the 4.7-incher does have enough “juice” to outdo champs like the Droid DNA or Galaxy Note 2. Those are last year’s flagships, but still.

But if HTC wants to capitalize on this presumed short period of domination, the One has to be released… yesterday. Thankfully, the Taiwanese look like they’ve learned a thing or two after last year’s One X flop. The current ETA for Europe is mid-March, but don’t be surprised if you’re going to see the bad boy in stores earlier.

The German and UK launch stages are all set, with pricing details almost fully revealed. O2 seems to have the edge on the competition in Deutschland, even though T-Mobile, Vodafone and E-Plus are also confirmed to carry the phone.

We’re less than 12 days away from O2 Germany’s release, according to the network’s website, meaning the One will start shipping on March 6. Off-contract pricing starts at €661 ($870), while the subsidized flavor will set you back €25.99 each month.

In both cases, you’ll get a Beats by Dr. Dre headphone set for free (normally worth €99), so the deal doesn’t sound half bad.

Notebooksbiliger.de also has the HTC One listed for pre-order, but the ETA is “late March”. The retailer’s One is at the same time a tad pricier than O2’s off-contract version – €669.90. On the other hand, if you prefer a carrier-locked model, you can pre-order it from here with Vodafone, T-Mobile or O2 plans starting at €182.

Meanwhile, even if the GB launch is still scheduled for March 15, (some) on-contract pricing details have been revealed in addition to unlocked price points. Phones4U, which happens to have the best price for the SIM-free One, also offers it with Vodafone, Orange and EE 24-month contracts.

The best deal seems to be with Orange, where you can get the One for free with £36 plans including 900 minutes, unlimited texts and 1 GB of data. Vodafone and EE also have the HTC phone available for no upfront charge, but their plans are steeper, at £37 and £41 respectively.

Upon pre-ordering the HTC One, you’ll get a complimentary set of UR Beats headphones, as well as a flip case, worth a total of over £100. Not too shabby, but is it enough to make you not wait for the GS4? You tell us.

The French operator Orange, which actually serves quite a few number of countries, has today announced three new Android smartphone. Two of them use Qualcomm chips, but one of them, the San Remo, uses a MediaTek chip. Let’s just dive right in:

The Nivo is the cheapest of the three, though we don’t exactly have a price tag yet. It’s going to have a 4 inch 800 x 480 screen and a 5 megapixel camera. Under the hood there’s a dual core Qualcomm Snapdragon S2 clocked at 1 GHz. And Android 4.1 Jelly Bean is on-board.

Next up the ladder is the San Remo. Like we said earlier, it uses a MediaTek chip, which something that’s quite rare in Europe. The chip in question is the MT6577, which is a dual core ARM Cortex A9 part that’s clocked at 1 GHz. The phone has a gigantic 4.7 inch screen that painfully only does 800 x 480 pixels. And as for the cameras, 8 megapixels on the back, 2 megapixels on the front.

And finally, the cock of the walk, we have the Lumo. It’s Orange’s first network branded smartphone to have 4G LTE. It’s going to support the 800 MHz, 1800 MHz, and 2600 MHz bands. As for the specs, you’re looking at a 4.5 inch display that does 960 × 540 pixels, 8 megapixel camera, and a dual core processor (Qualcomm S4 Plus) clocked at 1.2 GHz.

We really wish we could tell you how much these devices cost, but that information wasn’t provided. We don’t even know which European countries will get which phones. We’ll try to get some answers at Mobile World Congress next week. We’re really curious to know who made these things. Huawei? ZTE? An unknown Chinese player we haven’t even heard of yet?

People are having less kids today than they were just a couple of decades ago. Put another way, countries are getting older. Now there’s nothing wrong with old people, one should respect their elders, but today’s gadgets are definitely not meant for them. There are way too many buttons to push, interfaces are confusing, and there’s so much wrong that it kind of makes you feel sad to watch someone old try to use something like the Galaxy S3.

Enter the Raku Raku F–12D, a smartphone made by Fujitsu for the Japanese market. It has an Android skin that can best be described as “Made for Seniors”. The buttons are large, most of Android’s options are removed, and it’s basically a feature phone, but with the power of a modern device. That means there’s a web browser, high resolution camera, and things that cheap feature phones for old people don’t have. Plus, do you honestly think Grandpa wants to pull one of those giant feature phone bricks out of his pocket so he can tell everyone around him that he’s too old to figure out technology?

This phone, the Raku Raku, sounds great, doesn’t it? The French operator Orange thinks so too, which is why they’re going to beging selling the device in France as the Stylistic S01. Expect it to land on store shelves in June. Pricing hasn’t been announced yet.

While we’re on the topic of phones for old people, aren’t today’s phones pretty much just giant screens? Why then doesn’t Samsung or HTC or Sony or anyone else for that matter make a “Grandpa Mode” that when activated simply transforms the UI into something that old people don’t have a problem with? Should be easy enough to do, right? If custom launchers exist, why can’t someone make one for their parents?

]]>http://www.androidauthority.com/fujitsu-phone-grandpa-157264/feed/0Spotify Premium now bundled with Orange Young plans in Switzerlandhttp://www.androidauthority.com/spotify-premium-bundled-orange-young-plans-switzerland-151561/
http://www.androidauthority.com/spotify-premium-bundled-orange-young-plans-switzerland-151561/#commentsTue, 29 Jan 2013 08:14:01 +0000http://www.androidauthority.com/?p=151561
Orange Youth plan subscribers in Switzerland are in for a musical treat, as the carrier has announced that it has started bundling Spotify Premium with all of its Orange Young plans, effectively allowing subscribers to pay as little as 29 francs per month or about $31 to access Spotify Premium – that’s the monthly cost of their chosen mobile subscription, not the cost of Spotify Premium, which is included as a free service. This promo is a first in Switzerland and applies to all three Orange Young plans, including the most expensive one that costs 79 francs or about $85 per month.

The first Orange Young plan is the least expensive one of all. It’s called Orange Young Star and it comes with unlimited calls and texts as well as 1GB of mobile data. Meanwhile, there’s a second plan called Orange Young Galaxy, and it comes with unlimited calls and texts along with 3GB of mobile data. Finally, the third and most expensive Orange Young plan comes with unlimited calls and texts plus 10GB of mobile data, and it’s called Orange Young Universe. All three plans now include Spotify Premium subscriptions that will allow users to enjoy music streaming without hitting their monthly bandwith caps.

Back in November last year, we saw how Spotify teamed up with Sprint to provide a carrier billing option that allowed Premium subscribers to pay their $10 monthly subscription fee through their Sprint bills. Today’s news is an indication that Spotify is still working continuously to make things easier in more ways for its users around the world.

It’s not clear whether or not a similar deal is being cooked up by Spotify to be served elsewhere in the world. But a free Premium subscription to its music streaming service would surely be a welcome addition to just about any mobile data plan, provided that the price is right. For those outside of Switzerland, you can still get a free taste of what Spotify offers by downloading the official Spotify app through Google Play.